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This is an upfront look at the smear, how
we responded and nonetheless how it continues today. It might be a valuable lesson to other journalists who believe in
ethics and conversely it’s a close up look at how someone devoid of any ethics,
acts within our profession. I’ve never
seen anything quite like it myself. Under normal circumstances, we would
write him off, but with the internet, we find it necessary to refute him and
show in his own words the arrogance of a man with a mission. He seems dead set on proving his suspicions
and hypothesis -- that we cannot be people who act with conviction and who
believe in fairness, thoroughness and working without a preconceived mindset.
His is an example of what none of us should strive for.
It started out
innocently enough.
Little
did Charles Reid know what he had started.
Sugg’s
weekly column in Atlanta is called “Fishwrapper”—need I say more.
The writer made
Sugg is
quoted as saying, “I don’t advocate “objective” journalism.”
He seems to have a “Borjesson made a valuable contribution. But she was snookered in the Fox/Monsanto/Steve Wilson/Jane Akre story. It’s real easy to believe almost anything bad about Fox and Monsanto, which the two reporters relied on in their self-promotion. I and my paper had considerable first-hand experience in reporting on the story. My opinion: The real story is that the reporters manufactured a crisis”
Sugg then goes on to post a story his Tampa paper
ran three years earlier, at the time of our trial.
It’s vicious and inaccurate and highlights how little fact-checking
went on at the Tampa weekly paper. Click
here ( -- In the article, now posted again for all the Investigative Reporters and Editors to read, Sugg recounts how we met with him in March of 1997 to discuss the rBGH story. Yes, we did want to get the story out and with Fox now weaseling out and beginning the edit saga that was to go on for eight months, it was clear we had to place the story elsewhere. I believe we contacted the Miami Herald as well. The problem became clear that we would run into the same problem if Monsanto started to pressure the Miami Herald, especially if the paper was put on notice in advance of publication that Monsanto wanted it killed. It became very clear we weren’t going to have anybody else pick up the report. In this now three year old article, Sugg defends WTVT saying the station was still trying to work with us despite our “intransigence and arrogant hostility,” a characterization that needs to be attributed to someone with a first hand opinion. Sugg doesn’t bother. So often he proves himself to be the perfect waterboy for Fox. He also insists that the station wanted to put the story on the air. All of us did —the news director who was fired by Fox; the general manager—who was fired by Fox. Unfortunately the people who probably would have been there to help us get the story on the air were all fired, leaving us with an assistant news director who was vying for the ND position, and the Fox lawyers who had a different mandate. Sugg says Steve is guilty of ridicule and intimidation in responding to his reporter’s story at the time. We did send his reporter a letter about her article. In it, the reporter repeated an assertion by the Fox attorney, that my husband called me a “dumb bitch,” during my deposition. The beauty of having a court reporter in the room is that every audible utterance is recorded. All the reporter had to do was check the record. She didn’t do so. The Fox p-o-v was repeated and again repeated here three years later. No fact checking necessary for the Weekly Planet or Sugg. Is it laziness or that preconceived mindset again? )
Steve replies, if Borjesson was snookered, so were many other people who
have seen fit to recognize us for our work and courage in journalism. Click
here
Unfortunately, the IRE list discussion disintegrated eventually into a
series of strong rants from Sugg, who at one point even called another
journalist, Bob Port, a liar for his contribution to Buzzsaw.
Eventually a few independent voices spoke up and asked the nastiness to
cease. Click here
Meanwhile Charles Reid, who had started the IRE discussion about Buzzsaw,
published his article on the book. See
http://www.american-reporter.com/ All
was quiet on the IRE list for awhile but Sugg had been stirred up by the support
for Buzzsaw and its contributors on
the IRE list. On August 29th,
2003 Sugg began the electronic assault to our personal emails, essentially
advising us that he planned to out us
as less than honest about the fundraising we had done on our website to help pay
for legal costs. Click
here
His premise: we had funded a “luxury lifestyle” by misappropriating
funds supporters had sent us to fight what we’ve always considered a lawsuit
in the public interest. His false
assumptions:
We informed Sugg that his facts regarding real estate linked to our names
were not accurate. We told him,
whatever he thought he had discovered
should be checked with the primary source of public real estate records
available, in this case the county property appraisers’ office.
Click
here
His response? It
doesn’t matter if the information is wrong—anything he publishes that is
part of a public record—he is covered, bullet-proof from a legal standpoint.
Never mind an honest journalist’s first duty to accuracy, getting your
facts correct. Just make sure
you’re covered legally, immune from any lawsuit.
If I were the boss of a reporter like that, I would be very nervous.
We
thought this rather arrogant—wouldn’t you want to get it right, not just
assure you were covered from prosecution?
Instead of correcting his error, he demanded us to correct it for
him. Click
here Tired of the attack, Steve contacts the editor of Creative Loafing to see in what format they would accept a response. The paper’s VP of Editorial affairs responded in the absence of the editor. See message. After that contact, it was noticeable how Sugg’s demeanor changed. Click here
The second assault arrives when Sugg e-mails us
again with another tirade less than a week later.
Now he is certain we could be facing felony charges and $10,000 in civil
penalties for not registering our fundraising activities with the state.
Our fundraising activities consisted on a single page on our website,
suggesting three ways supporters could help.
One of them was to make a cash contribution to help pay legal bills.
Click
here He also accused us of grossly exaggerating the fact that we face $3
million in reimbursement of Fox legal fees if the appellate decision is not
overturned.
Some background here: Florida’s
2nd District Court of Appeal last February, when it overturned the
jury verdict in my favor, decided we should be on the hook for the legal fees
and costs Fox spent on its defense. We
asked Sugg to check with his friends at Fox to see if they plan to withdraw
their motion to seek those fees and told him that unless they did so, our
estimated liability has never been exaggerated.
Then, on September 17, 2003, a
little known on-line media site called News Blues decides to get on board
Sugg’s assault train. News Blues
calls itself the online outlet for TV News whiners.
In fact, during its heyday, it had a bulletin board where people would
post anonymous complaints, accusations and dirty secrets from inside the
newsrooms of various stations around the country. Probably due to legal liability issues, the bulletin board
has been taken down and now News Blues is nothing more than its editors
speculation, whining, and occasionally a leak from a newsroom that eventually
turns out to be, to some degree, true. As
one subscriber told us: About 20% of what’s in there is about 10%
true—sometimes.”
At any rate, we’ve never met the
News Blues editor Mr. James or Mona Scott.
And they’ve never contacted us. I
note that Mr. James’ topic during a journalism conference a few months back
was: “Forget Journalism—Gossip, Innuendo and Rumor for Online Fun and
Profit.” It doesn’t seem to go with the image they portray on their site. You can read about them here: Read this article from NewsBlues
But after some discussion with Sugg, the editor of NewsBlues also decided
we are Sham Martyrs and starting writing about us on their site. BTW- they placed not one call to us. (Sidebar -- Other inaccuracies here in NB- that our case was thrown out on the basis of news distortion, leaving the impression that Fox was not guilty of such a thing. False! NewsBlues doesn’t understand the legal technicalities here, nor did they do any research for this report. The appellate decision to overturn our case does not go into what the jury decided after a five week trial---that Fox WAS guilty of news distortion. The 2nd DCA does not look into the merits of the case at all. Instead the 3 justices decided that the news distortion we were fighting, does not qualify as a whistleblower issue, therefore the case never should have gone to trial in the first place. Why doesn’t it fall under the definition? Under whistleblower law, the misdeed the whistleblower reports must be illegal, defined as a violation of a law, rule or regulation. The basis of our case was that lying, falsifying the news over the public airwaves is illegal in that it violates the Federal Communication Commission’s rules and regulations against news distortion. The three judges didn’t agree. The bottom line is good news for any disreputable news broadcaster---go ahead and lie on the public’s airwaves. The 2nd DCA has essentially decided that a whisteblower will never be able to blow the whistle on a broadcast station’s misdeeds. That sounds like a story to me. NewsBlues has so many things wrong, among them that Sugg covered the entire Wilson Akre case when he was editor of Weekly Planet. False! Sugg was actually supposed to testify at trial to the chilling effect our run-in with Fox had had on Steve’s career. Because Sugg was a potential witness, he was barred from most of the trial. He did have a reporter there for a few days of the five week trial.) We are told by a media attorney there is not much one can do when
attacked by an on-line rag. Lawyers are reluctant to take such cases against such an
organization funded by some single malcontent who, as my mother in law likes to
say, “doesn’t have a pot to pee in, or a window to throw it out of.”
Lawyers view such cases as business decisions.
All such cases take the same amount of time and effort, so why not
concentrate on those cases where the defendants have deeper pockets?
Nonetheless,
Steve wrote to News Blues and asked for a correction.
Click
here
Two days later, News Blues responds not with a correction but a repeat of
Sugg’s never-documented hypothesis: we shouldn’t live in a luxury home
(complete with the address where our nine year old daughter also lives) and
implying Steve is lying when he says we
don’t live in a townhouse (we don’t and property records we accessed do not say townhouse). Click
here
Sugg and his friend at News Blues finally figure out the error in the
public record and Steve responds. Click
here
Meanwhile, Sugg got back to
us to inform us he had erred on another, more important allegation:
he admits we do not have to register with the state as he thought. (Interesting how his tune changed after we included his
bosses in emails, requesting a correction to the Media Jackels story.)
Click
here
Assault # ? –are you keeping score?
Now comes a whole new line of attack, however with a more civil tone.
Sugg now wants to know if we really hid money under our mattress as Steve
said during a deposition from October of 1999.
Now where would Sugg get such an obscure document that was never entered into evidence at the trial? Who is feeding this stuff to him? There were at least 20,000 documents entered into evidence in our case and Mr. Sugg has never proven himself to be top heavy in the research department. Click here And
the beat goes on. Also on Sept 19,
2003, Sugg raises another issue for a new assault. The $3 million in legal fees we are facing, if the
Second District Court of Appeal does not reverse its February 2003 ruling in
this matter (we have appealed this). Conservatively,
the cost and fees run up by Fox and its high priced attorneys is at least $3
million. One source we promised not
to identify says Fox believes it could be $5 million.
Whatever the number, Murdoch’s henchmen have filed a motion to recover
that money from me and Steve. But
never mind the facts, Sugg believes that our estimate is an exaggeration.
Click
here
This
brings us to September 25, 2003 when Sugg now has a new line of questioning.
He is inquiring whether the “reasonable belief” standard of a
whistleblower is enough to prove that Fox actually did distort and falsify the
news. Click
here
Some more Background: A
whistleblower in Florida is someone who a.) fails to participate in or b.) plans
to report to authorities what they believe to be his or her employer’s illegal
activity. For example, if my boss
tells me to pour sludge into the municipal waterway, I do not have to have a
chemical analysis done of the
material and research state laws to first
determine what amount of petrochemical by-products are allowable under county
and state ordinances before I report it. The
law is intended to grant remedy to whistleblowers and not make them jump through
that hoop.
The jurors in my case said YES to the fact that Fox was guilty of
pressuring me to falsify the news. There
was no doubt about whether I merely reasonably believed the story was “false, distorted, or
slanted.” When you look at the
actual jury verdict form, the jury determined it was
actually false, distorted, or slanted. In
fact, if jurors did not accept that premise, they could not
have gone on to find in my favor and award me $425,000.
Here is the Verdict Form for Jane Akre from our trial of July-August
2000.
"Do you find that the Plaintiff Jane Akre has proven, by the greater
weight of the
“YES,” the jurors checked.
September 30, 2003: Back to an earlier issue that is still very much
alive with Sugg. It’s the
“mattress question” again. The
fact that Steve testified in a 1999 deposition—undoubtedly fed to Sugg by Fox
attorneys—that Steve once removed $5,000 from the Citizens Fund for the Right
to Know.
Sugg wants to know if we used this money
for our own good. Steve
answers that this was done at a time we caught private investigators, likely sent by Fox, picking up our garbage at the curb, looking for private papers and
evidence to support their defense. Steve
had truthfully testified that the lawsuit had distracted him from completing our
tax returns on time. Our accountant
advised that if Fox were to use that information by reporting us to IRS, the
government could freeze our bank accounts. This would not only make it difficult to pay the light bill,
we would not be able to continue to finance the lawsuit. Since, in our minds, it was not a stretch to believe the
defendants might try such a tactic, Steve withdrew the money and held it outside
the bank. He took it in the form of
a cashier’s check and never cashed it. It
was held only until the return was filed weeks later, then re-deposited back
into the same Citizens Fund account.
Sugg
essentially wants to know if that is the right way to treat the IRS, or were you
lying in your deposition? See
message Steve asks to
see his deposition, which Sugg supplies only in what he says are the “relevant
parts,” but later agrees to submit the entire document.
Since Sugg asked me the same questions about $5,000 and it no doubt came
up in my deposition as well during 1999, I ask him for the transcript of my
testimony as well. He refuses.
Click
here
Steve issued a final statement hoping to put the “money under the
mattress” statement to rest (no pun intended). Click
here
Steve finally relents and offers Sugg proof positive in the form a bank
statement which shows the re-deposit of the $5,000, exactly as he previously
represented it to Sugg. Click
here
But even that doesn’t quiet our relentless columnist.
He now insists even if he saw the statement, it would not prove how that
re-deposited money was eventually spent. This
is madness—and it is clear Sugg will not be content until he sees every
private record he wants to peruse. He
suggests he may need even more documentation in the future.
Steve has had it.
Steve does what any investigative reporter does when he wants to get to
the truth. He picked up the phone
and called Sugg directly October 7th at his office in Atlanta. It went something
like this: Steve: “How
long are you going to keep trying to pound this square peg into a round hole?”
Steve: “This
is Steve Wilson” (long silence)
What followed was what they call at the U-N a “free and frank
discussion between the parties.” A
few minutes in, Steve asked Sugg: “By
the way John, are you recording this conversation? “
There was a long pause, then Sugg continues with a previous point.
Steve interrupts and repeats the question.
“John, I asked if you were
recording this conversation.” Another
long pause, Sugg replies that it
certainly would not be illegal to do so since he is in a state that does not
legally require notification of such a recording.
Steve hangs up the phone. A
few minutes later, he calls Sugg back to explain why he does not trust Sugg as a
man or a journalist. Steve explains
many reporters record calls. The
honest ones admit it when asked. Sugg
claims now he is not, and was not, recording.
Steve has doubts but doesn’t care if the conversation is recorded.
After this conversation, Sugg sends another email clarifying what was
said on the phone.
But
what we ended up with was merely a “Clarification” buried so deep in the
paper’s online version it was—and remains—nearly impossible to find.
Almost all professional news organizations agree with journalist ethics
codes and standards which say corrections should be swift and displayed as
prominently as the original error. Steve writes to CL’s editorial V-P, Neil
Skene, asking what happened?
See
message
Although Sugg has published more than 2,000 words smearing us, we are
given no more than 500 to respond. How
much can you say with 500 words? Not
much. Click
here Mr. Skene seems to recognize the error in not
making a correction/clarification prominent on the website. Click
here But we were
disappointed that he did not seem to personally review the points for a
correction that Steve documented. He
apparently wrote off the whole dispute to the difference between a home or a
townhouse.
And even as we come to the
end of this saga, Creative Loafing finally does run Steve’s Letter to the Editor in
its October 9th issue.
At this writing, we have asked the corrections and the Letter to the
Editor to be displayed as prominently as the first Media Jackels piece.
CL did attach the “Clarification” to the bottom of its on line
edition for all to see. We are still waiting for the Letter to the Editor to be as easy to access on line. After all, it’s only fair, not to mention adheres to the professional standards set forth for all credible publications and broadcasts.
Goodbye and hopefully goodnight. See more on Ken
Edelstein, editor of CL and Neil
Skene
One must know when to quit and when enough is enough.
But it is very interesting to be on this side of a smear when so many
irrefutable facts are on your side and mostly what you get in return is a wall
of arrogance. I can’t help but
believe our profession would be so much healthier if journalists would listen
and dig beyond what is necessary to fill the pages fuelled with their own wild
speculation. Steve is presently doing
investigative work for the ABC television station in Detroit.
Sugg, or someone carrying his water, even went so far as to tip off the
radio-TV columnist for the Detroit paper, apparently hoping he might extend the
trashing to the mainstream media. Fortunately,
the Detroit writer was more of a journalist in discerning what was a strong
story worth publishing than those we dealt with at CL or NewsBlues. He failed to
find Sugg’s baseless speculation newsworthy.
But
in responding to an inquiry the Detroit paper made of Steve, I think my former
reporting partner summed up the whole experience pretty well when he wrote this:
“You know
the real story here, if there is one? It
is how such an attack on someone who makes a living questioning others, as we
do, can be a powerful reminder of the importance of checking facts and being
fair to everyone who is the target of an investigation.
“Without trying to sound too self-serving, I have always done my very
best to put accuracy and fairness above all else when producing my own
reports...but this is a vivid reminder of why it is so important to be both
accurate and fair. As personally
painful as it is, I wonder if every investigative journalist ought not to get
such a reminder at least once in his life.” |
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Post script—by Jane Akre |
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I can’t help but wonder that the readers in Tampa surely deserve a paper that serves up substance and facts about their community, not the ranting of a columnist gone wild. See it at : http://www.weeklyplanet.com/current/news_feature.html Again, it is filled with so much
commentary, so much of it based on nothing but hypothesis and conjecture.
I almost wouldn’t mind as much if it were labeled as commentary—but
it isn’t. Also omitted was our
“clarification,” and the Letter to the Editor which should both be displayed
prominently, even though it is a different publication.
The Weekly Planet did not even contact us before berating us in their
paper. Apparently they left the entire editorial content up to Sugg,
which is a major mistake. Sugg lies to readers when he says “Wilson
acknowledged he has no basis for the $3-million figure…..”
Wilson has told him he does have a basis for the fees we could be on the hook for, that
estimate coming from courtroom insiders who followed our case.
In other words Sugg has been, as lawyers would say, “put on notice,”
that this statement is false. Are
his editors asleep at the wheel? Can
this be anything else but malicious? Can
you say Jayson Blair? See the
emails here. Click
here And as a dutiful puppy, once again
NewsBlues jumps on the trash bandwagon, this time labeling us as “Deceitful
Crusaders,” who keep money under the mattress.
Again no attempt to ever contact us by NB. See
message |
